FPR Tough It Out In Winton Heat

Ford Performance Racing had a tougher day than expected during practice for this weekend’s V8 Supercars event at Winton Motor Raceway where higher temperatures than normal made it difficult to find the correct car set-up.

Racing in late-spring rather than winter provided teams with a new test, though with no green tyres in use times were not representative of actual pace.

Mark Winterbottom ended the day best of the FPR trio in fourth, one place ahead of Will Davison.

David Reynolds proved the more consistent across the two sessions despite ending the final session ninth.

All three drivers said the track conditions were vastly different from what the team usually experiences in testing, but extensive knowledge gained at its home track will assist with adjustments overnight ahead of Saturday’s qualifying and first race.

FPR’s Dunlop Series driver and series leader, Chaz Mostert enjoyed a productive day and despite not using green tyres he still ended the day fourth-fastest.

DRIVERS’ VIEWMark Winterbottom – #5 Orrcon Steel FPR FordPractice 3: 11th – 1m24.45sPractice 4: 4th – 1m24.11s“Winton is such a frustrating place at times. You can test here all year and be on fire and then come back a week later and conditions can be the absolute opposite. We tried to go through our list of things to do and what we’ve found in testing is different to what we found so we had to tune on the go. The time by the end was a bit better but the car isn’t quite right yet.”

Will Davison – #6 Tradingpost FPR FordPractice 3: 15th – 1m24.49sPractice 4: 5th – 1m24.17s“I am not overly happy with the day. There are still a lot of question marks over things as the track conditions were the worst I’ve experienced here all year. It was really hot and slippery which made it hard to test anything conclusively. We improved in the second of our sessions and if we can tidy up a bit of our understeer there is a lot of lap time to find tomorrow.”

David Reynolds – #55 The Bottle-O FPR FordPractice 3: 7th – 1m24.30sPractice 4: 9th – 1m24.26s“It wasn’t that bad a day today. The timesheets make it look worse than it is as tyre life and tyre wear has been a challenge. We tried a few things and some worked and while others didn’t we’ll have a look through things and try and improve it all for tomorrow.”

Tim Edwards – FPR Team Principal“We didn’t have any issues today though the track conditions made it a challenge. The track conditions change here so much and with different quality tyres on all cars, varying fuel loads and warmer than usual temperatures it is a hard day to get a read on. Thankfully this is our home track so we have a lot of knowledge and will put that to good use tonight.”

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